I don't get why people just love DoT snapshot. I find it counter-intuitive and not fun - and I'm even good at it.

Try and give a good look at our single target rotation, the counter-intuitive part of it:- Our DoT's snapshot - and it's hard to read with the standard UI.- We use an AoE attack in our single-target rotation.- Our highest direct damage finisher is often a dps loss - unless it's used at a target below 25% and it extends a Rip buffed with a trinket proc/TF/DoC charge. - We have an attack with a positional requirement - but it's often better to just spam Mangle anyway. - We have a 5 minute debuff - but the armor debuff only lasts 30 sec!- I don't even want to go into Savage Roar, use of cooldowns and trinkets, target-switching etc. That's just complicated, but at least it's not counter-intuitive.

Now, go and explain that to a Feral who's already somewhat into his class. I did, it worked, but making another player grasp this stuff and actually use it was fairly challenging. Today, you basically have to have some kind of DoT/debuff/Savage Roar tracker. I use Droodfocus - he didn't use anything like that. But again, I've played Feral since patch 1.8 and he's a "newcomer" from Cataclysm!

Imagine I'd tried to explain all this to a completely new player. That's just not possible.

Our rotation has become over-complicated and difficult to track. On top of that, it has a long ramp-up and it's very unforgiving. Compared to most other dps specs, a Feral needs a whole new level of situational awareness and addon-support to reach competitive dps.

And truth be told, we could scale that down a bit, without gutting the spec. This would also make us more competitive in PvP.

Tinderhoof wrote:I am expecting a June-July target which would put the start of the beta around the new year.

Historically, all releases were timed about 12-15 months after its announcement (blizzcon or otherwise) so that would bring us to about Q1 2015 - however, they did mention that they're skipping a pre-expansion content patch this time in favor of releasing WoD faster. My guess would be somewhere around the Q3/Q4 border 2014 (October?). That would be about ~45 weeks from now which would allow for one more big pvp season after this one.

I do hope the expac will arrive before next autumn. So far they have - for the first time - followed up on their intention to bring content out faster, so maybe that'll apply to the Beta process and the expac too? Cata lasted for 1 year and nearly 10 months, and since MoP came out in late September I'm sort of hoping we'll get WoD in late spring/early summer. Time will tell (in the meantime, I have a lot of bosses to kill on hc in SoO, we only just made it to 5/14 this week!).

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

Prot palas use Holy Wrath, Avengers Shield, Mages use Arcane Barrage etc. There's a lot of spells in use in a single target rotation that happen to hit more than one target.

Whitepaw wrote:- Our highest direct damage finisher is often a dps loss - unless it's used at a target below 25% and it extends a Rip buffed with a trinket proc/TF/DoC charge.

Because feral druids aren't about direct damage. It is about bleeds. We're not rogues.

Whitepaw wrote:- We have an attack with a positional requirement - but it's often better to just spam Mangle anyway.

Yeah, this is dumb. Either merge Mangle and Shred or move their energy/damage further away from each other. Right now they are way too similar.

Whitepaw wrote:Imagine I'd tried to explain all this to a completely new player. That's just not possible.

Our rotation has become over-complicated and difficult to track. On top of that, it has a long ramp-up and it's very unforgiving. Compared to most other dps specs, a Feral needs a whole new level of situational awareness and addon-support to reach competitive dps.

It is supposed to be hard. That's what is fun. You could explain the basic rotation in a few points. Keep SR up. Keep bleeds up. Don't waste CP. Don't cap energy. This will give ok dps. If the player wants more dps he has to put more effort into learning the mechanics. Isn't this exactly how it should be? Unless there is a big delta between good and bad players then what is the point in playing at all? I'm not sure this is true but I read some blizz dude said that "warlocks had a way too high skill cap" and that scares me a lot. Too high skillcap?? What the fuck?

Unless there is a big delta between good and bad players then what is the point in playing at all?

What? I guess we play for different reasons. I play to have fun and I've been having fun, as a Feral, since patch 1.8.

I didn't talk about dumbing down the Feral playstyle - I talked about the current rotation being counter-intuitive. Our abilities and the connections between them sometimes behave in ways that demands extensive simulation to figure out. We have a handful of people in the world keeping track of that - the rest of us just discuss their results and use their products (addons and spreadsheets). So, right now, the difference between a "good" and a "bad" Feral is whether he/she reads the right forums and uses the right addons.

Your approach is rather elitist. If followed by the devs, it will create a spec that's very hard to get into - and so the number of Ferals will keep declining. Is that what you want? I have to be honest - it's not what I want. The less players a certain spec has, the more it's marginalized. Raiding as a Feral in Vanilla and TBC taught me that. It was a struggle to give some insight to others regarding simple stuff like Feral weapons and stat weights (rogues got agility leather as per standard, until I convinced my guild to give us equal opportunity on the loot rolls in AQ40). This even continued in Cataclysm (now with hunters and polearms!).

Keeping myself geared up through Vanilla and 3 expansions has convinced me that we could use some more Ferals out there. Having a counter-intuitive rotation doesn't help us - at all. But an intuitive rotation can still be complicated and hard to execute perfectly, which is exciting gameplay.

Tinderhoof wrote:I am expecting a June-July target which would put the start of the beta around the new year.

Historically, all releases were timed about 12-15 months after its announcement (blizzcon or otherwise) so that would bring us to about Q1 2015 - however, they did mention that they're skipping a pre-expansion content patch this time in favor of releasing WoD faster. My guess would be somewhere around the Q3/Q4 border 2014 (October?). That would be about ~45 weeks from now which would allow for one more big pvp season after this one.

If we had the normal roll out schedule I might agree with you. However all prior announcements have come either right at the start of, or shortly before the beginning of the final tier. MoP was planned from the outset to deliver more content faster. They have succeeded for the most part (T14 was even a little to short). With the expectation of putting out content faster why would they set themselves up for having SoO last even longer then pervious final tiers?

Also the fact that at Blizzcon they made several mentions that the story of this expac is setting the table for the following one. For the first time they are letting slip that they have a much more detailed road map for going further then prior expacs.

I think everyone needs to relax about any upcoming Feral changes. Claiming you're going to quit the spec months before the stuff is released based on incomplete information is insane and not constructive.

I was talking to Tinder about this yesterday, but I'm not sure if the snapshotting change implies that all snapshotting is gone. IMO, I predict the snapshotting change applies to stat snapshotting, and traditional modifier effects, like TF, SR, DoC will remain.

In regards to things I hope they improve:- I am not a fan of our T1 talents. I think Wild Charge should be restored to Feral Charge and given back to Feral and Guardian.- I don't like weapon swapping- I don't like my mana bar (I want energy-based MotW w/o dumping form)- Bear form was gutted too much, let's get some functionality/damage back- Mangle/Shred (delete one, or alter one of the generators)- Trade some of Beserk's energy savings for a damage modifier (re: Aggixx)- Ratio of damage between direct and bleed (I think the current distribution is pretty good but FB is way too low.)- I think dumping HT's in ourselves is weird- I'd like to see Wrath via PS

Random ideas:- Resto has genesis, Boomkin might get a genesis-like effect, MW might get orb explosion, I'd love to get some way to "detonate" our bleeds- I think a stack-consuming bleed debuff would be interesting (like a debuff that each bleed tick on that target reduces the stack by 1, and applies extra damage)- I hope more abilities become charge-based (like having 2 charges of TF, instead of being forced to burn it every 30sec like clockwork)

I was talking to Tinder about this yesterday, but I'm not sure if the snapshotting change implies that all snapshotting is gone. IMO, I predict the snapshotting change applies to stat snapshotting, and traditional modifier effects, like TF, SR, DoC will remain.

In regards to things I hope they improve:- I am not a fan of our T1 talents. I think Wild Charge should be restored to Feral Charge and given back to Feral and Guardian.- I don't like weapon swapping- I don't like my mana bar (I want energy-based MotW w/o dumping form)- Bear form was gutted too much, let's get some functionality/damage back- Mangle/Shred (delete one, or alter one of the generators)- Trade some of Beserk's energy savings for a damage modifier (re: Aggixx)- Ratio of damage between direct and bleed (I think the current distribution is pretty good but FB is way too low.)- I think dumping HT's in ourselves is weird- I'd like to see Wrath via PS

Random ideas:- Resto has genesis, Boomkin might get a genesis-like effect, MW might get orb explosion, I'd love to get some way to "detonate" our bleeds- I think a stack-consuming bleed debuff would be interesting (like a debuff that each bleed tick on that target reduces the stack by 1, and applies extra damage)- I hope more abilities become charge-based (like having 2 charges of TF, instead of being forced to burn it every 30sec like clockwork)

I suspect you're right about DoC and TF. DoC would probably need some big changes for us otherwise.

Im kind sure they will change doc because that was the plan in the soo patch, but they just dident spend time on it and had to keep it as it was.

Myself love t1 talant for feral tho, all 3 talant have a use somewhere and there is loads of ferals using dif talant - I Agree that weapon swapping should go away- I Dont see any point doing to much more damage in bearform, would be cool if they add some more healing from FR for ferals tho- I Think they should just remove mangel if they change so you dont have to be behind to shred- I love HT myself in raid and thats somting i hope they keep, might need to change so we can cast wrath or somting with PS because right now our rotation will be kinda boringAnd yea fix our damn berzerk so later in the expansion it will be usless more or less if you have hero with it

If we can cast Wrath on PS, then we lose the free healing capability that we have now (since Healing Touch would now have a damage cost). I'm not sure I'd be so willing to give that up. Keep in mind that Blizzard is looking to make triage healing more important (by making "smart heals" less smart), so the triage capability of our instant HT will become more valuable.

It's not like Wrath on PS would be terribly interesting either. Just another button to press, no real decision involved. It's not even really a ranged attack since you aren't triggering PS from range (unless you do something terribly inefficient like moonfire to savage roar).

Stenhaldi wrote:If we can cast Wrath on PS, then we lose the free healing capability that we have now (since Healing Touch would now have a damage cost). I'm not sure I'd be so willing to give that up. Keep in mind that Blizzard is looking to make triage healing more important (by making "smart heals" less smart), so the triage capability of our instant HT will become more valuable.

It's not like Wrath on PS would be terribly interesting either. Just another button to press, no real decision involved. It's not even really a ranged attack since you aren't triggering PS from range (unless you do something terribly inefficient like moonfire to savage roar).

If they increase the importance on our healing are you not afraid they will "balance" ferals around this point? I'm much to afraid of a hybrid tax being implemented for our utility that most low end ferals never ever use.

I wouldn't mind a rotation where 100% bleed uptime would no longer be the norm, ie. if you had to use bleeds as your "cooldown" so they would still be a considerable chunk of our damage, but by not requiring 100% dot uptime, you could pick and choose your battles and not fall behind whenever targets don't like long enough (or direct damage is more efficient). Or maybe we could do with some stances like balance druids.

Tremnen wrote:If they increase the importance on our healing are you not afraid they will "balance" ferals around this point? I'm much to afraid of a hybrid tax being implemented for our utility that most low end ferals never ever use.

If they somehow decide the healing is too strong relative to other hybrids, then they'll just nerf the healing like they did with enhancement shamans. I can't imagine this happening, though, since by its nature, healing touch is not going to show up prominently on healing meters (whereas healing rain definitely did).

Tremnen wrote:If they increase the importance on our healing are you not afraid they will "balance" ferals around this point? I'm much to afraid of a hybrid tax being implemented for our utility that most low end ferals never ever use.

If they somehow decide the healing is too strong relative to other hybrids, then they'll just nerf the healing like they did with enhancement shamans. I can't imagine this happening, though, since by its nature, healing touch is not going to show up prominently on healing meters (whereas healing rain definitely did).

I think our Enhancement Shaman's Healing Rain on Thok Hc still heals around 4 Million a fight for putting a puddle on the floor.

Stenhaldi wrote:If we can cast Wrath on PS, then we lose the free healing capability that we have now (since Healing Touch would now have a damage cost). I'm not sure I'd be so willing to give that up. Keep in mind that Blizzard is looking to make triage healing more important (by making "smart heals" less smart), so the triage capability of our instant HT will become more valuable.

It's not like Wrath on PS would be terribly interesting either. Just another button to press, no real decision involved. It's not even really a ranged attack since you aren't triggering PS from range (unless you do something terribly inefficient like moonfire to savage roar).

I think the idea has some minor potential. If triage healing becomes important it could be any interesting decision picking between HT or Wrath (assuming they make both proc DoC). However, I don't put much stock into the triage healing talk. It's something that has been talked about since Cata beta and usually lasts for half the first raid tier before healers are back to their old spamming ways.

Then again when it comes down to damage vs. healing, with a few exceptions, damage usually ends up being the right answer.

Up until recently I ran HotW on a lot of fights because of the needed Tranq but about a month ago maybe I went back to full time DoC like I had been since start of MoP. I don't mind wasting heals on myself when I am at full HP but I have an ALT modifier in my HT macro.

HT Macro has no Auto-Unshift(avoid popping out of form) and it also heals Target of Target which is usually the tank, If I hold ALT while using the macro it heals myself.

I switch out this Macro with the same macro minus the ALT mod and have it heal myself on certain fights like Malk to make sure my Bubble is always full.

If you want to avoid wasting heals on yourself then I suggest doing something like this as tanks can always use extra heals.

They are removing Haste breakpoints next expansion. Also why do you love haste so damn much. because the Berserk change you are arguing for would like a heavy haste build to run.

I'd rather have a set it and forget it mastery build than a SPAM ALL THE BUTTONS JOHN MADDEN build.

Because Feral would scale better and would not be reliant on Blizzard buffing them every patch. Also haste gear is more prevalent and easier to obtain than mastery gear.

I agree with the poster that suggested shorter bleed times. I was shocked we could keep everything up in just blues. I would prefer much shorter and harder hitting bleeds. It would be preferable if Feral didn't hit 100% uptime until the final tier. That would also help on Bosses with focus fire adds which Feral has always been poor at.

One of their declared goals is to make all secondary stats somewhat useful for all specs, so having Haste affect our bleeds would be a nice step in that direction. Remember we won't be able to reforge any longer. If it were (more) useful (than today), getting oodles of Haste on a new piece wouldn't be quite as painful.

-Sibylle

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." (Brendan Gill)

Haste is useful for us via melee damage and Omen of Clarity procs, if you made bleeds scale with haste it would make mastery and especially crit look like garbage in comparison. We would probably be gemming 320 haste gems right now if that was the case.

It seems unlikely Haste would overtake Mastery, unequipping Rune I show Mastery is 50% higher than Haste. Even if it did I would be ok with that since Feral would get a much more equitable benefit from Heroism. Also as was pointed out there will be no reforging so it would be nice to have 2 good secondary stats like most classes instead of just 1.